Today’s NY Times Article on WH Counsel, Don McGahn, while repeating some earlier reporting, reminds us that eventually there will be executive privilege issues among other lawfare ahead.
Its primary message was that McGahn was avoiding being set-up as the patsy but the larger message, however implied, was POTUS*’s incompetence.
More interesting is the cooperation that McGahn has given Mueller, and whether there will be a similar path for McGahn as in John Dean’s in Watergate.
Don McGahn’s Watergate doppelgänger, John Dean weighs in today on the competence of the WH, repeating some earlier comments incorporated in this Salon article from July which now become more pertinent as the first of two Manafort trials is concluding.
The former White House counsel, whose Senate testimony was considered significant in the eventual ouster of his embattled boss, thinks that Fox News could help Trump ride his term to its end in spite of the mounting scandals he faces.
According to Dean, if the conservative news network – which launched more than 20 years after Nixon resigned in disgrace – was around in the '70s, it is possible that Nixon could have "survived" the web of political scandals and cover-ups that surrounded him.
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"I doubt Trump will be forced from office – even if Mueller has tapes of him talking with Putin about how to rig the election," Dean said. "While we might have a Democratic House after the 2018 elections, which could impeach Trump, I do not see the needed 67 votes in the Senate to find him guilty and remove him from office. And, given the fact he is shameless, he will never resign."
Dean has criticized the Trump White House from its start, and his latest interview further added to that theme.
He told Rolling Stone that he deems Trump "the most incompetent person to ever become president." He also accused him of being "not only insecure and erratic, but uninformed, for he doesn't read history – or know it."
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It may be a holding action considering that McGahn worked for the campaign in 2016, and might know about the various Russian involvements in the RNC. If nothing else the Schmidt and Haberman story serves a indirect objective to establish some of the terms for a coming executive privilege battle. The coming connections among the various elements may become clearer as #TrumpRussia proceeds past the midterm elections.
In at least three voluntary interviews with investigators that totaled 30 hours over the past nine months, Mr. McGahn described the president’s furor toward the Russia investigation and the ways in which he urged Mr. McGahn to respond to it. He provided the investigators examining whether Mr. Trump obstructed justice a clear view of the president’s most intimate moments with his lawyer.
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Even if the president did nothing wrong, Mr. Burck told White House lawyers, the White House has to understand that a client like Mr. Trump probably made politically damaging statements to Mr. McGahn as he weighed whether to intervene in the Russia investigation.
Inside the counsel’s office, lawyers feared that on the recommendation of Mr. Dowd and Mr. Cobb, the White House was handing Mr. Mueller detailed instructions to take down the president and setting a troubling precedent for future administrations by giving up executive privilege.
At the same time, Mr. Trump was blaming Mr. McGahn for his legal woes, yet encouraging him to speak to investigators. Mr. McGahn and his lawyer grew suspicious. They began telling associates that they had concluded that the president had decided to let Mr. McGahn take the fall for decisions that could be construed as obstruction of justice, like the Comey firing, by telling the special counsel that he was only following shoddy legal advice from Mr. McGahn.
Worried that Mr. Trump would ultimately blame him in the inquiry, Mr. McGahn told people he was determined to avoid the fate of the White House counsel for President Richard M. Nixon, John W. Dean, who was imprisoned in the Watergate scandal.
www.nytimes.com/...